Preventing wasteful water flow in large facilities having a large number of water fixtures such as apartments, condominiums, and office buildings has dramatic environmental and economic benefits. However, fully maximizing the benefits of water conservation in these environments has been an elusive endeavor.
In the past, condominium and apartment buildings have been constructed in a manner that prevents the economical metering of water supplied to each individual housing unit. Typically, a single water meter is installed in the main line supplying water to these buildings and water usage charges are billed to the condominium association or the apartment owner based on the overall quantity of water consumed as measured by that meter. The water utility expense has been recovered through condominium fees or rents paid by the residents.
Consequently, regardless of the actual quantity of water consumed in each housing unit, the total cost of water service has been shared equally or allocated using a formula based on a pro-rata share of the total living area. In such an arrangement, individual residents do not suffer direct economic penalties for wasteful or inefficient water consumption habits. Nor is there a direct economic reward to individual residents who implement water conservation practices. As a result, leaking water fixtures and generally wasteful consumption habits have tended to develop. The resultant increase in water expenses stresses operating budgets and has encouraged building managers to implement water conservation programs designed to counter this trend.
Known water conservation programs have generally included a combination of the following four elements: 1) installation, if possible, of water meters in each individual unit to provide a means of billing residents directly for the quantity of water consumed in their unit; 2) installation of efficient water fixtures such as water conserving toilets, shower heads, and faucets; 3) educational efforts designed to heighten awareness among residents of the benefits of early detection and repair of leaking water fixtures and the benefits of water conservation habits; and 4) maintenance programs designed to identify and repair or replace leaking water fixtures.
Of the four elements, the installation of water meters has had the most dramatic effect on lowering consumption rates. This has worked by instituting an economic penalty or reward that stimulates improved water consumption habits. The downside of the installation of individual unit water meters is that it has generally been economically feasible only in buildings having a 1:1 relationship between a main feed line and the individual housing unit being metered. Many older buildings are not plumbed in this manner. Instead, water in these older buildings is supplied to each individual housing unit from multiple water lines. As a result, the establishment of a metered billing system requires the installation of multiple water meters in each individual housing unit. Often times, and especially in condominium communities, this has not been economically viable. For example, the following patent documents describe expensive and complicated water monitoring and billing systems that implement water flow meters that measure the quantity of water flowing through a water supply pipe: U.S. Pat. Appl. Pub. No. 2004/0073524 and U.S. Pats. Nos. 5,986,573, 6,161,100, and 6,377,190.
Further, the installation of efficient water fixtures has been found to have a significant initial impact on water consumption levels. However, in the absence of a sustained ongoing maintenance program, seals on new faucets and new toilet valves and other water fixtures deteriorate to the point where the resulting water leakage eclipses the savings achieved by the design features of the new efficient water fixtures.
Lastly, it has been found that while increased water conservation awareness of residents is somewhat helpful, its overall impact is generally recognized as limited. Moreover, the ability to identify leaking water fixtures by residents can be difficult as these leaks are often very subtle or are obscured inside the toilet tanks. Also, quite frequently residents are aware of minor leaks in water fixtures, however the leaks are deemed to be of little significance and therefore go unreported.
Due to the above listed limitations, in multi-unit housing complexes most effective water conservation programs have relied on sustained maintenance programs in which ‘Locate and Repair’ has been the operating principle. While these programs are simple in concept they can be a challenge to implement effectively. A skilled technician equipped with the proper tools and parts can readily repair leaking water fixtures. However, locating and getting access to faulty fixtures can require an extended effort.
In the absence of reliable reporting by residents, the detection of faulty water fixtures requires periodic, building-wide water fixture inspections by maintenance personnel. This can be a major demand on available maintenance resources and results in inspections being performed only on an annual or semi-annual basis. Consequently, timely detection and repair of leaking water fixtures has not been achieved.
As a result, there continues to exist a need for a low-cost, highly-sensitive system and method for quickly and accurately identifying and reporting leaking water fixtures in facilities having an extensive plumbing network for the distribution of water.